Amusing things at work

I had two things happen last night that were mildly amusing.

  First, when I was working up in Alpine, a very affluent community in north Utah County, I had parked my truck across the street from a house I needed to visit. Usually, I leave the truck running on stops because I am only out of the truck for 2-3 minutes, and I feel like the wear on the starting motor caused by using it 30+ times an evening is much worse than just idling for a few minutes.

  As I was approaching the door of the house, two guys were walking down the street on the other side, next to my truck. One of them called out to me "Hey! I'm going to steal your truck because you left it running! That makes it legal, right?" I responded "If you want to take your chances, go ahead!" (I left off the other part that went through my mind: "If you think you can outrun a bullet...") He called back "You shouldn't trust a guy walking down the street with a gallon of liquor!" while holding up his gallon jug of what looked like water.

  I turned around to face them so they could see my uniform and replied "You shouldn't ever threaten to steal a cop's truck!" I could see both of them turn pale from all the way across the street, and they hurried off without another word.


  The second thing was right at the end of the night, on my last stop.
I pulled up to a house, and again I found myself parking across the street from the house I needed to visit. I noticed some people in the house I had just parked in front of glancing out the window as I got out. Next thing I know there are people in EVERY window watching me. To put it delicately, they appeared to be afraid I was with the border patrol. I had to spend a few minutes across the street talking to the person I had come to reach, and the whole time, up to 10 people would come out on the porch, go out & watch over the fence from the back yard, or peek out between blinds in the windows. They were very afraid.
As I got back in my truck to leave, I briefly considered yelling out "INS! INS!", but even I'm not that big of a jackass.